Newsom California Initiative Accused of Links to Chinese Influence Network

Newsweek

7 hours ago

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An initiative supported by California Governor Gavin Newsom is part of a broader attempt by the Chinese Communist Party to build networks of influence in the biggest U.S. state, according to a new report from an advocacy group that it critical of Beijing's human rights record in Hong Kong.
Newsom's office did not respond to Newsweek requests for comment. A California business association that has supported the initiative said it was purely economic and not political. China's consulate in San Francisco defended it as an example of mutually beneficial cooperation.
The Washington, D.C.-based Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation (CFHK) said it had investigated a "Bay to Bay" initiative aiming to link San Franscisco's Bay Area to the burgeoning Greater Bay Area in southern China - a project presented by Chinese officials as an opportunity for business and to address climate change.
"In these subnational engagements, the U.S. state and local officials are dealing with an apparatus orchestrated and led by China's central government and designed to benefit the CCP," according to the report, Hong Kong's Greater Bay Area and the CCP's Strategy to Influence U.S. State and Local Officials, published on Wednesday by the Washington, D.C.-based Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation (CFHK), an advocacy group for freedom and for political prisoners in Hong Kong.
Such efforts could be "incompatible with US interests and values," said the author, Shannon Van Sant, CFHK's Strategy and Public Affairs Advisor, who cited the positions of those who had taken part in meetings from the Chinese side as well as Chinese state media accounts of meetings, Chinese government and U.S. business websites and other documents, including photographs.
The initiative was similar to China's Belt and Road Initiative, or to its global network of "sister city" relationships that seeks to develop closer relationships with local officials - but that carried political risks as the ties also transmitted central government policy and influence and interference, said Van Sant. On the Chinese side there were plans to extend it to New York and Vancouver, she said.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Wednesday, Oct 25, 2023.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Wednesday, Oct 25, 2023.
Office of the Governor of California via AP
The Bay to Bay initiative was supported by San Francisco's Bay Area Council, a business association focused on developing the local economy.
Reached by telephone, John Grubb, Chief Operating Officer of the Bay Area Council, told Newsweek that the council was a business group and not a political organization. Nevertheless it was aware of political risks: "So our work, everything, is always 'eyes wide open'."
"We're Team players here. We're part of the U.S. team," Grubb said.
"Our engagement was that this is an economic strategy, okay, in between these regions with China, to try to better integrate. And that's been our conversation. It hasn't been about other political or ideological aspects of that," Grubb said.
A spokesperson for the Chinese consulate general in San Francisco told Newsweek: "The people of China and California share a long-standing tradition of friendship. Based on the principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation, the two sides have had cooperation that delivers tangible benefits to both peoples and injects vitality into China-US relations."
It said the Bay Area Council had for years created economic opportunities and that cooperation between China and California helped both to achieve climate goals.
"We firmly oppose any attempt to distort and undermine China-US subnational cooperation through ideological prejudice and a Cold War mentality," it said.
Two Bays
A first "U.S.-China Bay to Bay Dialogue" was held in Berkeley in May 2024, signifying an upgrade for the effort which has been underway for several years, the CFHK report said. The dialogue took place side by side with a U.S.-China climate event.
In attendance was Governor Newsom, according to several accounts that carried photographs of the meeting. Newsom's office did not respond to a request for comment on his presence.
China's Greater Bay Area project was conceived by Duan Peijun, a professor of philosophy and strategy at the Central Party School in Beijing, the CCP's ideological and governance training center, Van Sant said. It is a national development strategy that is integrating Hong Kong, Shenzhen and more than half a dozen major cities in the province of Guangdong economically, technologically, and via infrastructure.
China sent a 100-person delegation to the Berkeley dialogue including Yang Wanming, the president of a key political influence organization of the United Front, the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC), and the Guangdong Province Governor Wang Weizhong, according to China Daily.
Also in attendance: officials from the Beijing's powerful National Development and Reform Commission, and Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan. The meeting followed a visit to China in October 2023 by Governor Newsom where he met Chinese leader Xi Jinping and signed five Memoranda of Understanding at the city, province and central government levels.
Pushback
"California is not even doing the bare minimum to protect their people and assets from the CCP, even though California is China's top state target," said Michael Lucci of State Armor, a Texas-based group spearheading what it calls a pushback to Chinese Communist Party interests in some state capitols.
Texas had enacted 14 bills this year to counter China, and New York is advancing legislation to stop buying compromised Chinese technology, among other efforts, Lucci said.
"Under Gavin Newsom, they are actually building deeper ties with CCP actors," Lucci said.
In 2022, President Biden's National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC), part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said that subnational influencing by the Chinese Communist Party was a risk to the United States.
Such relationships often yielded business benefits, but as tensions between Beijing and Washington have grown, "the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) under President Xi Jinping has increasingly sought to exploit these China-U.S. subnational relationships to influence U.S. policies and advance PRC geopolitical interests," the NCSC said.